American botanist. Robert Rodin was Professor of Botany at California Polytechnical University San Luis Obispo from 1953-1976. He studied ferns in California, the Himalayas and Namibia, authoring Ferns of the Sierra in 1960.

Rodin was born in Sacramento, California. While serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War Two he was stationed in Guam and China. Following the war he continued with postgraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, undertaking a botanical expedition to southern Africa in 1947. After gaining his PhD in botany in 1951 (with a dissertation on Welwitschia morphology) he joined Forman Christian College in Lahore, West Pakistan, as a biology professor, and during this sojourn made extensive collections of ferns in the Himalayas. He returned to the U.S. after two years, where he served as professor of botany at California Polytechnic until his retirement in 1976. In 1966-1967 he returned to Asia as a Fulbright Professor at the University of Delhi, and in 1973 made collections in south-western Africa. Rodin's chief interests were Gnetale anatomy, ethnobotany (of Ovamboland) and Californian fern taxonomy. He married Elva Bain in 1948, with whom he had three daughters..

Sources:
David B. Lellinger, 1979, "Robert J. Rodin (1922-1978)", American Fern Journal, 69(1): 28.